I live about 2 miles from Sonic (yeah, I know I'm SUPER lucky!) but I can't figure out a way to get the ice home & keep it all frozen.
By the time I get home, there's a small puddle of ice at the bottom of the bag, which refreezes into a huge hunk when I put the bag into my freezer.

Obviously, this defeats the purpose of going to Sonic to get the small ice pellets, because when they refreeze when I get home, they're the size of softballs.

Here's what I usually do:
I fill a huge cooler w/ my own ice, then go to Sonic & order about 4 bags. I tell them to get it to me as quickly as they can, because if it melts, the ice will refreeze all together. So they do get it to me quickly. But when I do get home (it takes about 5 minutes) there's always a small amount of water at the bottom of the bag, not to mention that the pellets have begun to melt. So when I put it in my freezer, it all melts into one huge chunk.

I usually have to bust it up with a hammer to get back to the original small pellet sized ice.

I don't have a problem with this, but the bag that the ice comes in is usually in bad shape by the time I finish busting it up w/ a hammer.

So I guess I have two questions here:

1-how do I get it home w/o it melting?

2-is there a bag that you all know of that'll take a beating w/o getting holes in it when I bust the ice up with a hammer?

I was thinking maybe there was some kind of bag I could get from Walmart or somewhere, that I could pour the big chunks of ice in, then beat the living daylights out of it until the pieces are small again.

I put ice cubes in a baggie, put a dishtowel underneath and over the bag of ice then hammer away. This way, you won't damage your counter or put holes in the bag!! Now, try this and go enjoy your ice!!!

I live about 9 miles from Sonic and this is what I do when we have warm weather and I can't keep my ice frozen. When you get it home and it's semi melted, prick the bottom corner of the bag and let all the water drain out into the sink then lay it in the freezer, after about 15 minutes take it out and drop it on the floor a couple of times and return to freezer, do this once more in about half an hour and it helps alot. Good luck!!!